Optics & Photonics News

RSS

New Photonic Device for Greater Optical Data Storage

Engineers and applied scientists from Harvard University have demonstrated a new photonic device with a wide range of potential commercial applications, including dramatically higher capacity for optical data storage.

5 Jul 2007

ESA's GIOVE-A Laser Ranging Campaign Successful

Fourteen laser ranging stations participated in a campaign to track ESA's GIOVE-A satellite during the spring and summer of 2006, providing invaluable data for the characterisation of the satellite's on-board clock.

5 Jul 2007

New Laser-Based Technique Provides First Non-Invasive Test to Measure Skin Aging

Physicists and medical researchers for the first time have demonstrated a new technique that non-invasively measures in real time the level of damage to the skin from sun exposure and aging, and initial results suggest that women's skin ages faster than men's.

5 Jul 2007

Solvay and Georgia Tech Ink Deal on OLED Research

The Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) and Solvay announced a $3 million deal for OLED research today.

5 Jul 2007

World's Most Powerful Tunable Laser Shatters Another Power Record

The most powerful tunable laser in the world just shattered another power record: the Free-Electron Laser (FEL), supported by the Office of Naval Research and located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), produced a 14.2 kilowatt (kW) beam of laser light at an infrared wavelength of 1.61 microns on October 30.

5 Jul 2007

Adaptive Optics Help Sharpen Night Sky

An artificial, laser-fed star now shines regularly over the sky of Paranal, home of ESO's Very Large Telescope, one of the world's most advanced large ground-based telescopes.

5 Jul 2007

New Wave of Fiber Research

Cotton may be getting even more breathable. A new wave of fiber research debuts with an international science and technology conference.

5 Jul 2007

Frictionless Optics for ESA's Darwin Mission

The multi-satellite Darwin mission will use optical interferometry in which at least three separate orbiting telescopes jointly operate as an equivalent single telescope with a much larger effective aperture, thus achieving the required resolution.

5 Jul 2007

Electrons Observed in Tunnelling Process

We have to climb a mountain in order to conquer it. In quantum physics there is a different way - objects can reach the opposite side of a hill simply by tunnelling through it, instead of laboriously climbing over it.

5 Jul 2007

Dr. Peli of Schepens Eye Research Institute Elected SPIE Fellow

The International Society for Optical Engineering will honor 56 new Fellows of the Society this year.

5 Jul 2007

New Type of Diode Laser

A new type of diode laser, called the quantum cascade laser (QCL), may eventually change this situation. Diode lasers are inherently compact and suitable for mass-production, which has led to their widespread and low-cost use in everyday products, including CD and DVD players.

5 Jul 2007